Take My Breath Away
by Indigo2831
Summary: Missing scene and tag for 1.23, Ua Hiki Mai Kapalena Pau. Danny blamed his obliviousness on the Sarin and the night in the hospital, because it had taken him far too long to realize that Steve was worried. Angst and bonding abounds!


Ugh, two weeks into the summer and I already miss the show terribly.

I have to say I was thrilled with the idea of real hurt/comfort in the episode, Ua Hiki Mai Kapalena Pau. I was a little disappointed with how quickly everything was resolved (and that they gave everything away in the sneak peek that I watched about 3,700 times), but I just decided to use my imagination. This story was actually supposed to be a lot shorter, but I realized that I really love it when Steve and Danny just talk about their lives, so I just let my muses play.

Please let me know what you think.

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><p><strong>Take My Breath Away<strong>

Steve McGarrett bolted through the narrow and chaotic hospital corridors, and roughly pushed a nurse out of the way without even a glance backwards. He flashed his badge and shouldered his way into the treatment room. "Doctor! My team said he was exposed to Sarin. She said he'll need…"

"Pralidoxime and Atropine!" the physician finished for him as everyone in the room began to systematically put on masks and protective eye gear.

He had never seen so many people working so furiously before, and he was grateful for their focus was on Danny. Steve backed up, out of the way and drank in snatches of his partner whenever a nurse or doctor moved. Danny was still jerking, arms flopping, shoulders cresting off the edge of the gurney.

"Pushing it now." The doctor administered the medications, and suddenly all movements stopped. The medical staff pulled their hands off, intently fixed on the monitors. Steve found himself staring at them too, although he had no idea how to read them.

It hit him then with phenomenal gravity that if the drugs didn't work, Danny probably would be dead within hours. Such a realization felt like a physical blow with more velocity than a percussion grenade, and he found himself braced against a tray table, eyes glued to the squiggly lines and pulsing waves. Everything stilled with dire tension.

A nurse adjusted her hastily put on gown.

A doctor held an intubation tube at the ready in one gloved hand.

Danny continued to shudder and shake on the gurney.

Cold sweat licked down Steve's face and neck, and he felt like throwing up.

The room smelled of latex and fear.

Nothing was happening. Steve stomped his foot and closed his eyes. He didn't know if he was praying or wishing or willing Danny to breathe, for the drugs to work, for his vendetta against Wo Fat not to claim another life.

Precious moments passed like years, Steve was bereft. _Danny was dying_. Tears pulled at the back of his throat. Horror churned in his chest.

And then...a cough—weak, muffled and pitiful—but a clearing of lungs nonetheless. Steve tore his eyes open to find the staff crowded around Danny again. Steve couldn't see anything, but he was rooted in the spot either by fear of distracting the staff or of being thrown out. Pushing up on his tiptoes, he caught sight of Danny's right hand. It had been rendered in a rigid claw in the ambulance, fingers rounded and bunched like the knobby branches of a tree. It was limp now, moving a little against his side.

The doctor motioned him over.

"Is it okay? Did it work?" He asked, desperation coloring his tone.

The doctor didn't nod or shake his head, but offered, "his breathing is improving, and that's encouraging."

Steve gazed down at Danny, who was unconscious, clammy and still alarmingly gray. But his breathe was fogging up the oxygen mask, and that was all that mattered. "Danny, you're going to be fine. The drugs are working and everything's gonna be fine."

"Sir, you need to leave. We need to get him stabilized and decontaminated. I'll update you as soon as we can."

Steve placed his hand on Danny's chest, feeling the rapid intake of shallow breaths but the strengthening beat of his heart. "Jersey's not letting a little neurological warfare take him down, right?" He smiled, though Danny couldn't see it, and squeezed his hand. "Prove all that bullshit you spout right."

Outside of the treatment room, Steve stood stagnant in front of a row of chairs, giving himself a minute to stitch himself together with meager vestiges of hope and Danny's tenacity. He arranged his face into what was probably a poor semblance of composure, remembered that he was a SEAL, and went out to track down the son-of-a-bitch who nearly killed his partner.

-5-0-

After he'd gotten shot in Jersey, Danny was welcomed back to work with a few enthusiastic handshakes and desk full of other detectives' old case files as they'd used his as storage while he was recuperating. Thus, Danny was flabbergasted by the open expressions of love and the four-dozen hugs he received upon returning Five-0 just thirty hours after being admitted to the hospital. Maybe it was the post-survival gleam the world seemed to have after almost dying, but Danny was embracing it, smiling easily and laughing giddily. He felt needed and appreciated and luckier than anyone had a right to be, because there was air in his lungs; Rachel was leaving Stan; and Five-0 was now five people strong. Even the luscious greens and tropical palm trees seemed more picturesque than Danny remembered.

Danny grinned stupidly at Steve as he scrolled through a few websites.

"Sang Min back where he belongs?"

"In a cage? Yeah. I turned up the heat for good measure."

Danny lifted his eyebrows, eyes glued to his computer. "Think you're going to cook more information out of him? If he knew where Wo Fat was, he'd tell you."

Steve sat down in the chair in front of the desk, and smirked. "Probably. Doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it."

Danny laughed hoarsely. "Aww, you can take the SEAL out of Guantanomo, but you can't take the Guantanomo out of the SEAL."

Steve smirked. "For your information, I've never actually been to Git-mo."

"For all intents and purposes, you were never really anywhere, were you?"

"Touché." Steve nodded at the computer. "What are you working on?"

Danny cleared his angry throat, pressing a hand to his chest that was still sore and tight from the day before. "Um, I wanted to get some flowers for Jenna. What color of roses says 'Thank you for saving my life?' Pink, yellow, red?"

"Probably all of them."

Danny clicked with purpose. "The deluxe symphony bouquet, it is. Oh, it comes with balloons. Sold!"

Steve sat back in the chair, scrutinizing his partner carefully. "How are you feeling?"

Danny's bright blue gaze flickered to his Steve. He'd recognized the underlying lilt of sincerity.

"I won't be running a marathon in the next few days or ever, but I'm all right."

"Elaborate."

"Steve, what do you want? The frequency of my BMs? I'm good…isn't that your line?"

"I've lived in holes for months a time. I've seen, heard and smelled it all."

"Oh, I bet you have." They stared each other down for a few long moments before Danny relented. "My throat's a little raw. My chest hurts. Everything's still sore, which the doctor said was normal."

"Maybe you should go home, get some rest."

Danny squinted at his partner, who was clean-shaven, wearing fresh clothes and even smelled of aftershave, and somehow he still looked drained and exhausted. "Maybe _you_ should go home and get some rest. I spent most of yesterday unconscious, so I'm good. Have you even slept after you were, ya know, _blown up_? Did you even see a doctor after that?" Steve scratched his cheek and avoided his eyes. "That's what I thought, Commander Hypocrite. I don't plan on repelling off any mountains or infiltrating a hostage situation on the U.S.S. Missouri, so I'm fine to work. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."

"Did Rachel say the same thing?"

Danny pulled his credit card out of his wallet and typed in his numbers to purchase the flowers. He balked at being treated like he was some sort of breakable knick-knack, especially when his partner was G.I. Joe, and yet the mention of Rachel's name, he was smiling again like a dopey idiot. "She knows to keep her British mouth shut about such things. And horrible subject-change, dude."

Steve shrugged. "I'm curious, _brah_. When you moved here nine months ago, you communicated through lawyers and emails, and now y'all are…doing what exactly?"

"What two heterosexual adults do, Steven. Didn't they teach you about knockin' boots in the navy?"

"And you don't care that she's married."

Danny scoffed with a wave of a hand. "Why should I? Her being married is just a technicality."

"And you want to stick it to Stan?"

"Stan doesn't have anything to do with this. With us. He's just the poor rich bastard who was unfortunate enough to get in the way. He can buy a shiny new trophy wife whenever he wants. Rachel is everything I'm not, and I love her for it. She's impulsive and half-crazy…"

Steve huffed in laughter. "That doesn't surprise me."

"…and Stan was just a mistake because she was mad at me. Karma's a bitch, man, because that schmuck did everything he could to keep Grace from me when I did nothing but love her. I have no sympathy."

He was pretty sure he liked his partner after a brush with death, because he was open and easy-going and only a little belligerent. He spent two hundred dollars on Thank You flowers, smiled effortlessly, and he wasn't even wearing a tie. Yes, Danny Williams was downright cheerful, and Steve wondered if this was what Danny was like in New Jersey, before the divorce and the custody battle. "And what could you have possibly done to make her mad enough to divorce you, get sole custody of Grace and move 6,000 miles away?"

"Got shot." Danny confessed with a shrug. "She sacrificed her beloved Manhattan for New Jersey. She gave up the Fendi and the Gucci and the Prada—clothing labels for people who've spent the past decade in combat."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, babe." Danny cooed. "After I got capped, and then nearly died from the infection, she wanted me to quit and finish college and be some suit-wearing, paper-pushing goofball like all of her friends' husbands, but I'm not built to sit in an office. And well, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." His voice went staticky like an old radio before cutting off all together.

Danny turned his head to clear his throat and ended up, leaning forward, coughing harshly. When it didn't stop right away, Steve dashed into his office, and grabbed a bottle of water from his mini-fridge. He darted back and pressed it into Danny's hands. His partner had high crimson in his cheeks, and he took the bottle without a word. He drank in greedy sips. When he finished, he swiped his hand across his mouth and dug into his drawer for some Tylenol. "Just a headache, Steve. Chillax." He said raggedly. His voice was starting to sound as bad as it did the day before in the hospital.

Steve's hands began to sweat as he watched his partner down the pills and wipe the water from his eyes. He clenched his hands into fists, and counted to ten. He had to remind himself it wasn't yesterday, but the trauma of Danny collapsing, unable to breathe, hovered too closely. "Maybe you should go home and get some rest," he said pointedly.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Maybe you could get Sang Min out of the box before I have to arrest you for killing him."

His eyes flickered to the clock. "It's been like twenty minutes; he's fine."

"Humor me. I need to get on plans for finding that fool a safehouse—great use of taxpayers' money, ain't it?" Danny leaned forward to massage his temples. "Go interrogate him. And no water-boarding."

Uneasy, Steve left.

-5-0-

Danny unfastened placed his gun into his desk drawer and locked it. He traced the ridges of the key with his fingertips and momentarily thought about swallowing it for his partner's protection. Steve was driving him insane—shadowing his every step, and popping into his office without warning. Whenever intel on Wo Fat surfaced, Steve went into his dark place, so Danny didn't understand his distraction.

He sorted through the files, grateful he'd finally finished getting a protection detail lined up for Sang Min. His head still throbbed tightly, his throat was still inflamed, and his body was stiff and sore, especially in his chest. He imagined it was from the effort to breath, but honestly, Danny was sure. He remembered very little of yesterday.

Danny rubbed the back of his neck before leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. It had taken longer than he'd thought to secure a safehouse and the protection detail, and he was tired. He scrubbed a hand over his face and stood up, ready to join the others for lunch as they waited for the transport to arrive. It was a casual, boxed lunch of sandwiches from the lone deli on the island that didn't put pineapple on their pastrami and made their own gourmet potato chips. Danny wasn't especially hungry, but he ate as much as he could, knowing that Kono had ordered the food specifically for him.

The detail arrived while everyone was still hunched over their lunches, so Danny stood up and greeted the marshals. "Thanks for coming out. I'm Detective Danny Williams."

Morgan, the taller of the two—a guy with a gruff face, bald head and scarred knuckles—smiled crookedly. "Wasn't hard to decide to come out here for a week or two. Like a government-sponsored vacation."

"It's paradise." He said with only an iota of sarcasm. "Hang tight, guys, I'll go get Sang Min. I'm sure you guys are bad-ass and all that, but I'll warn you that this one's squirrely."

Ellers, the shorter man with a lobster-hued sunburn and a cheap Hawaiian shirt with board shorts, cracked his knuckles and sucked something out of his teeth. "That's just how we like 'em over at the marshals." He glanced around the state-of-the-art headquarters. "Man, this is a nice set-up you got here. Is it true what they say?"

Danny shifted from foot-to-foot, itchy to get Sang Min out of their building. "What do they say? Sorry, guys, I've been out of the gossip circle for awhile being stuck on this island."

"They said you guys have a backdoor around Miranda rights. I heard you threw a guy in a shark tank and went for a joy ride with a punk strapped to the hood of your car."

Danny chuckled and pointed at Steve. "He threw a guy in a shark tank. And he likes to get willy nilly with the grenades. He'll keep you entertained with stories while I go get the prisoner. Hey, Steven, be a human and show the marshals your weapons collection!"

Steve ignored him, and stalked over to introduce himself to Morgan and Ellers.

"This is my partner, Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett. He'll play hostess while I go pick up your entrée."

Steve shook the marshals' hands. "Hang tight, Danny, I got him."

Danny smiled tightly, "This is your kingdom. I just work here." The smile dropped and he flashed what he hoped was a covert glare of warning in his direction before he headed back to lock-up.

Sang Min, the hell-bound, people-smuggling sleazeball, looked like a drowned rat as Danny pulled him from his cell. His pimptastic threads were damp with sweat and he wobbled from the time in the interrogation room that had been pumped with hot air. Danny couldn't dredge up the energy to care. Not only was this jackass responsible for ruining hundreds of lives, he was the reason he'd been hospitalized. After cuffing him, Danny grabbed him roughly by the scruff of his neck, hauling him out of the cell like the sack of garbage he was.

"What's happening now? Where we goin'?" Sang Min asked in his distinctive, popping voice.

"You're going to hang out with a couple marshals until you can testify against your old pal, Wo Fat."

Sang Min bucked like a skittish dog. Danny merely tightened his grasp and propelled him around a corner. "Do that again and I'll break both your legs and drag you out."

"You think da marshals can protect me from Wo Fat. You stupider than you look, _haole_."

Danny cuffed him on the back of the head. "Says the guy dressed like a Backstreet Boy."

Sang Min planted his feet and locked his knees, pushing back against the detective like a stubborn child. "You don't undastand, Wo Fat has people, spies, everywhere. Screw da marshals. I'll stay here."

The detective missed his days in uniform when he carried a billy club and a tazer. Instead he launched a painful kick to the back of Sang Min's knee, instantly dropping him to the tile. Danny muscled him down on his belly, and slammed his knee in his back. "You gave up the right to make decisions for yourself when you started treating people like _things_ your order from catalgues. The only thing that's keeping me from putting a bullet in your head or tossing you in general population is the intel you have on Wo Fat. _Do. Not. Push. Me_. Because you and I both know I could kill you now and be rewarded for it."

The amazing and dangerous truth about being a cop was that it enabled one to learn about exactly what human beings were capable. Danny had seen people literally climb through fire to save strangers. And he'd witnessed the most depraved, senseless evil. People did horrible things, especially when faced with their own demise. Sang Min, as despicable as he was, was smart, calculating and in survival mode. Thus he wasn't completely surprised when a terrified Sang Min began wiggling and thrashing like an attacking cobra. Adrenaline was a powerful elixir and though Min was cuffed and prone on the tiled hallway, he managed to thrash so violently that he catapulted Danny off of him and roughly onto his rear where he skidded on the slick floor.

Danny clamored to his feet, dizzy from the instantaneous shift from a lazy paper-work filled morning to a frenetic battle in the hallway. He shouted for reinforcements and bolted after the mulleted weasel. Ignoring the high and tight cramp in his diaphragm, he outstripped the cuffed prisoner in two strides, tackling him into the floor and landing in a thunderous crunch of bone. An elbow jutted into his chest, just under the arc of his ribs. For the second time in thirty hours, air wheezed out of him like a deflating balloon. But there was no Sarin and Danny could regain enough breath to keep his head.

With a grunt of unchecked anger, Danny launched a kick to Min's ribs and another because he had the nerve to keep struggling. Sweating and winded, Danny drew his gun just as Chin and Steve peeled around the corner.

"I could give you another minute alone if you want to continue soccer practice."

Danny shook his head, finger on the trigger. "Just get…him out of my sight." He panted.

Steve and Chin hauled Min out of the hallway. Danny followed, feeling something burst free when he was finally out of the building.

He pressed a hard over his stampeding heart, and tried to swallow, but his throat was rough and raw and his chest muscles were sore and seizing. He coughed to clear his throat, but somehow it snowballed into a full-blown coughing fit with a few wheezes tossed in for extra drama.

Kono materialized in front of him with her kind but frantic eyes. "Danny? Are you all right? Here, sit down." She hooked a wheeled chair with those impossibly long legs and reeled it in, easing him down in it.

Steve, man-of-action, hovered a few feet away, panic blowing his feature open wide. He looked like a little boy.

He was scaring his team, poking the too-fresh traumatic bruises from yesterday—an event that Danny could only recall as twenty seconds of suffocating, agonizing fear, and then nothing. It probably should have scared him more than it did, but Danny was never one to dwell. He griped, told jokes and complained, sure, but he never dwelled.

He dragged in another breath and tried to stop coughing, but that just made it worse. Jenna knelt down in front of him, her soft hands rubbing his back. "You can breathe, Danny, just relax."

Danny shook his head, feeling an eerie flutter in his abdomen. "Just…got wind…knocked out."

She smiled, and it was sunny and beautiful. "Good to hear."

By the time Chin came over with a bottle of water, the hacking coughs had lessened in intensity. Flushed and thoroughly embarrassed, Danny rubbed his eyes, and sipped his water. "Sorry about the déjà vu. I'm okay."

Steve marched over to him, murder in his eyes. "_Go home_." He hissed through clenched teeth.

Danny tried to tamp down the last dregs of coughs along with the irritation of being ordered around like a child. "I'm fine. I just needed to…"

"I'm not kidding. This is exactly why you shouldn't be here today. Sang Min took you down when he was _cuffed_."

"He thinks he's about to get whacked. You know what that does to people, how desperate they get. I had it under control. I'm sorry Super-SEAL never makes mistakes, but I had it under control."

Steve rocked back and forth, tearing at his shorn hair. "YOU ALMOST DIED YESTERDAY!" He exploded with an uncoordinated flail of his arms. "Do you not understand that? You were an hour from being in a coffin or a gorked-out vegetable. So you're done, Danny. You're benched. And I swear to God, I swear on _my mother's grave_, if I see your face in this office for the next…week, I'm getting a new partner. I didn't want to pull rank, but you left me no choice. _GO HOME_."

Danny lifted his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. There were few things he loathed more than ultimatums and power-tripping assholes. He would have hated Step-Stan even if he wasn't boinking his wife twelve seconds after their divorce was finalized. His cheeks reddened with an entirely different kind of heat as he clenched his hands at his sides in righteous ire. He was about to lay into Steve about how partnerships work, and how they were on equal playing fields, about how he was a grown man and knew the limits of his own body. He opened his mouth, quite easily pulling in the air needed to kickstart the mother of all rants.

And he had an epiphany: _Steve was worried_.

Danny would definitely blame his obliviousness on the Sarin and the night in the hospital, because it had taken him far too long to realize why Steve was being his uncharacteristically polite shadow for the day. Normally, Danny would balk at being handled with kid gloves, because he wasn't a dainty flower, but as a father he understood overprotection in the face of fear, especially coming from someone who'd lost his parents in calculated acts of terrorism.

For the first time in his life, Danny snapped his mouth shut with an audible click of teeth, and stood up slowly, ignoring how the room spun a little and how his back muscles ached. "I will see you all in a few days."

"Seven days. With a doctor's note." Steve replied coolly, arms crossed over his chest.

Jenna's big eyes bounced between the two men uneasily. Danny patted her arm. "Welcome to the madhouse, babe."

Without looking at his partner, Danny left.

-5-0-

Steve pushed away from his desk with a jerk of disgust. He snatched his keys and glared at the pile of paperwork stacked on his desk. Danny had always done the paperwork. He shoved the neat pile of forms and reports onto the floor with an irate swoop of his arm, and stormed out of his office, eyes straight ahead so he wouldn't see the empty office or passenger seat.

Danny had followed Steve's orders in his trademark over-the-top, spectacular way. Not only had he not tried to come back to two days later as Steve had predicted (and hoped), Danny went back to _New Jersey_. And he'd only found out some a succinctly-worded email forwarded to the entire taskforce.

For Steve, terror and anger had always piggybacked on one another. And it was out of fear for his partner's life and his years of leadership in the navy that he commanded Danny to go home and rest. His life had been crammed with far too much tragedy, and seeing Danny collapse, succumbing to a neurological agent because of his fanatical need to put down his parents' killers, was more than Steve could endure.

At home, he changed clothes and went out for a run, losing his mind in the feel of his body and the rhythmic stomping of the ground underfoot. It quieted the thunderous thoughts in his head that kept him up all night or plagued with blood-splattered nightmares.

And yet the island had never seemed quieter than it had without his partner on it. Steve pushed for a climb up a steep bluff, feeling a blessed burn in his thighs and core, and wondered if Danny left because he was still upset at being reprimanded in front of the entire team.

He wondered if Danny would forgive him. That incessant concern propelled Steve another three miles. He ran until he was soaked with sweat and his legs were rubbery and trembling from fatigue. He ran until he was a little dizzy and had to wobble back to home. He collapsed on the beach just outside his house, and lay panting in the soft sand there. The washed roared softly in the background, and the ghosts in Steve's head grew louder despite the exercise.

He was never going to sleep tonight.

A square of dark blue sailed into his vision and a shift of cotton thudded on his sweat-soaked chest. .

Steve blinked before he lifted his chin and rolled his eyes backwards to find Danny looming over him in jeans and a Yankees tee-shirt. He smiled brightly, abandoning all manly pretense. "Aloha." He greeted over the waves.

"Love you too, babe."

Danny sat down beside him, looking well-fed and at ease. Steve unfurled the square of soft cotton and saw that it was a New Jersey Nets tee shirt. "So…Jersey?"

"Turns out if you almost die from a weapon generally used by terrorists, and your mom finds out, she kind of wants to see you. Who would have thunk it? Since I had _seven full days_ off, I made the trip."

"How was it?"

"After my mom stopped sobbing hysterically and trying to convince me to become an accountant, it was awesome. It was great to see everyone. I squeezed in a Yankees game, and ate my weight in junk food. Think I devoured about ninety-thousand calories, so we might have to go hiking again or something before I turn into an oompa loopa with badass hair."

"And a tie," Steve added. "Look, Danny, I should probably apologize for throwing my weight around. I was just…we'll let's just say both of us needed to recover from the Wo Fat/Sarin fiasco."

Danny waved him off with a waggle of his hand. "I'm used to your emotional cycle, Steve. Your PMS is like clockwork. I just forgot to slip you chocolate that day," he insisted. He traced nonsensical shapes in the sand. "I think that whole thing was worse for y'all than it was for me. I don't really remember much. Just you taking off my vest, thinking I was shot and my head splitting open. If you wanted to talk about it, you could."

"You were _convulsing_, Danny," Steve grated out as if he'd only been waiting for the invitation to unburden himself. "Everything happened so fast—bullets and bombs and running—and you seemed fine and then you keeled over, wheezing. You had to fight and rock just to breathe, but even that wasn't working. And then you started convulsing like you were electrocuted. And…no one knew what was happening or why. I thought…cancer, stroke, heart attack, aneurysm…but I never, ever considered biological agents. This was too close, Danno. You were almost gone. If the medicine hadn't worked…" Steve shook his head, feeling lightheaded and queasy. "There was nothing they could do…they were hands off…and…"

Danny appeared in front of him, tipping his chin up to meet his eyes like he did with Grace when she was upset. "Look at me, Steve. The medicine worked, and I'm right here."

"And if you had died, what would I do then?"

Danny's eyes danced. "Slather yourself in war paint and avenge my death Rambo-style, of course. I'd expect nothing less."

"This is so not funny."

"Everything is better when you're laughing. Babe, I appreciate your concern, really, but nothing is a guarantee. I could have died from the Sarin or I could have gone a different way and gotten killed by a falling coconut the next day. You can't do this job and not accept that, and I have. You need to as well."

Steve shook his head. "I can't."

"As my partner, you have to. Steve, hear me out right now: if I die, short of you shooting me in the face, it won't be your fault. It's the job."

"You're not…just my partner, Danny. You're…the best friend I've had in a long time. Annoying, opinionated and a hothead, but still…"

He ducked his head, feeling more loved than he ever had the right to be, and it took his breath away. He hadn't felt so needed since the divorce. "I think I'm going to hug you again. That was so precious."

Steve clamored to his feet. "This is why I can't tell you anything." He muttered in mock annoyance.

"Are you done? Or should I get some tissues and rent "Terms of Endearment'?"

"Yeah, I'm done," Steve sighed. "Are you good, though?"

Danny grinned. "After your declaration of love for me? Yeah, we're good. But if you ever threaten to get a new partner again, I'll kick your ninja ass." Danny said as they walked towards the house in the orange-pink gleam of the setting sun.

"You and what army?"

Danny lifted his fists and threw jabs in Steve's general direction. "This army of ten soldiers."

"I could take you down blindfolded and handcuffed; you know that right?"

Danny made an expression of exaggerated insult. "Don't make me get all Jersey up in this piece, because we can scrap, brotha. I just got back, and I have been re-Jerseyfied…"

"Am I going to have to hear about Jersey constantly for the next two weeks?"

Danny barked a laugh and shoved him hard. "For the next two decades at least."

Steve clapped his partner on the back. "Sounds good, Danno."


End file.
